Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be arrested after being stopped by police in Boulder, according to new data released Tuesday by the Boulder Police Department.

The data analyzes the citation and arrest activity by Boulder officers in 2018.

Compiled by Hillard Heintze, a security risk management company specializing in independent evaluations of law enforcement, the report shows that black people are twice as likely as white people to be stopped at an officer’s discretion, and once stopped, they are twice as likely to be arrested.

While Hispanics are less likely to be stopped, according to the report, when stopped they are 1½times more likely to be arrested than white people.

However, Cmdr. Jack Walker noted, that 85% of the arrests of black people are determined to be non-discretionary, meaning the officer had no choice in making an arrest as the person who was stopped was either caught committing a felony or had a warrant out for their arrest.

Julia Richman, the chief innovation and technology officer for the city of Boulder who helped analyze the raw data, said that may be a result of the institutional bias within the justice system in America rather than of Boulder police.

“This gets to the complexity of what’s the institutional bias versus what the police bias is,” she said. “If we have a system of law and justice that says here are the people who are criminals in America and the police have to arrest someone if they have a warrant. If a person from Denver is in Boulder and they have a Denver warrant, we arrest them.”

While this study would signify significant improvement over a study released in 2014 by USA Today, which reported that African Americans in Boulder were about five times more likely to be arrested than all other races, the Hillard Heintze study calculated commuters, students and homeless individuals into the general population of Boulder, as non-residents account for more than half of all the police stops, arrests and citations.

According to census data from the American Community Survey, the University of Colorado and the Homeless Solutions for Boulder County coordinated entry system, the population of Boulder can increase by as much as 50% depending on the day, with an average of 21,000 commuters, 34,500 students and 2,000 homeless people.

With just one year of data though, it’s impossible to spot any trends, and city officials say that makes it difficult to know how to fix the situation.

“We have a population that varies by day, by season and so it’s not as quick an answer as we were hoping for,” Richman said. “But we will collect this data in an ongoing fashion and will publish it in a similar way each year.”

However, the report noted that a number of cities around the country, and Oakland, Calif. in particular, have been collecting and analyzing similar data sets for year, but have yet to see any substantial changes to outcomes.

That hasn’t stopped the Boulder police from trying to get ahead of the issue though, especially after the department’s actions garnered national attention following the incidents involving Sammie Lawrence and Zayd Atkinson, two black men who were separately seen being sternly confronted by police officers while seemingly committing no crimes. The responding officer in the first incident has been placed on paid administrative leave. Police did not open an investigation into the second incident. However, the city has sought an independent review of both incidents by former U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer.

Related Articles

“We have to look at some structural changes and there’s been some ongoing work in municipal court and at the District Attorney’s Office,” Boulder Police Chief Greg Testa, said. “That’s where we start.”

With that in mind, Boulder Police convened a community forum on Tuesday night to go over the data with experts and police officials, as well as gather public feedback and seek recommendations.

For those who couldn’t make it, two repeat sessions will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday and May 20. The Monday session will be at the West Senior Center, 909 Arapahoe Ave., and the May 20 session will be at First Presbyterian Church, 1820 15th St.

Registration is available online at bit.ly/2XYa9zM. Anyone who wishes to register but does not have access to the Internet can contact Laurie Odgen at 303-441-3310 for assistance. To make sure everyone has a chance to attend, the city is offering free child care.

More in Colorado News

Eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 were closed Saturday afternoon at Georgetown due to a semitrailer fire, the Colorado Department of Transportation tweeted. The right lane remains closed, while the other lanes have since reopened. Drivers can expect heavy delays, transportation officials said. The fire initially closed both sides of the interstate as smoked crossed the highway. The load on the...